The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

THE DUMB BLONDE WHO KNEW TOO MUCH by Kirk Wilson

In August 1962, the world’s most glamorous film star Marilyn Monroe was found dead in bed at her home in Los Angeles. At first her death was said to have been caused by a drugs overdose; later, however, several people claimed that Monroe was given a lethal injection or otherwise murdered, claims that have been bitterly disputed over the years. The favourite conspiracy theory surrounding her death is that she had affairs with both President John F. Kennedy and his brother, US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and that Monroe was murdered because she knew too many state secrets. In 1973 the American writer Norman Mailer published a biography Marilyn in which he argued that, although Monroe had been deeply depressed at the time of her death, she had not committed suicide. Mailer attacked Marilyn’s last husband, playwright Arthur Miller, and reported that while making her last film The Misfits she had resumed an affair with Clark Gable. “Who is the first to be certain that it was of no interest to the CIA, or to the FBI, or to the Mafia, and half of the secret police of the world, that the brother of the President was reputed to be having an affair with a movie star who had once been married to a playwright denied a passport for supporting Communist movements”, Mailer wrote.